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.Our brother Eric, backed by brothers Julian and Caine, had been preparing to take thethrone, long left vacant by the unexplained absence of our father, Oberon.Unexplained to Eric, Julian,and Caine, that is.To the other group, consisting of Bleys, Fiona, and-formerly-Brand, it was notunexplained because they were responsible for it.They had arranged for this state of affairs to come intobeing in order to open the way for Bleys's accession to the throne.But Brand had committed a tacticalerror in attempting to obtain Caine's assistance in their play for the throne, in that Caine decided a betterdeal obtained in upholding Eric's part.This left Brand under close scrutiny, but did not immediately resultin the betrayal of his partners' identities.At about that time, Bleys and Fiona decided to employ theirsecret allies against Eric.Brand had demurred in this, fearing the strength of those forces, and as a resulthad been rejected by Bleys and Fiona.With everyone on his back then, he had sought to upset thebalance of powers completely by journeying to the shadow Earth where Eric had left me to die centuriesbefore.It was only later that Eric had learned that I had not died but was possessed of total amnesia,Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.htmlwhich was almost as good, had set sister Flora to watch over my exile, and hoped that that was the lastof it.Brand later told me he had gotten me committed to Porter in a desperate move to restore mymemory as a preliminary to my return to Amber.While Fiona and Bleys had been dealing with Brand, Eric had been in touch with Flora.She hadarranged for my transfer to Greenwood from the clinic to which the police had taken me, with instructionsto keep me narcotized, while Eric began arrangements for his coronation in Amber.Shortly thereafter,our brother Random's idyllic existence in Texorami was broken when Brand managed to send him amessage outside the normal family channels-i.e., the Trumps-requesting deliverance.While Random, whowas blissfully nonpartisan in the power struggle, was about this business, I managed to deliver myselffrom Greenwood, still relatively unmemoried.Having obtained Flora's address from Greenwood'sfrightened director, I betook myself to her place in Westchester, engaged in some elaborate bluffing, andmoved in as a house guest.Random, in the meantime, had been less than successful in his attempt torescue Brand.Slaying the snaky warden of the tower, he had had to flee its inner guards, utilizing one ofthe region's strangely mobile rocks.The guards, a hardy band of not quite human guys, had succeeded inpursuing him through Shadow, however, a feat normally impossible for most nonAmberites.Random hadfled then to the shadow Earth where I was guiding Flora along the paths of misunderstanding whileattempting to locate the proper route to enlightenment as to my own circumstances.Crossing thecontinent in response to my assurance that he would be under my protection.Random had comebelieving that his pursuers were my own creatures.When I helped him destroy them he was puzzled butunwilling to raise the issue while I seemed engaged in some private maneuver throneward.In fact, he hadeasily been tricked into conveying me back to Amber through Shadow.This venture had proved beneficial in some respects while much less satisfactory in others.When I hadfinally revealed the true state of my personal situation, Random and our sister Deirdre, whom we hadencountered along the way, conducted me to Amber's mirror city within the sea, Rebma.There I hadwalked the image of the Pattern and recovered the bulk of my memories as a result-thereby also settlingthe issue as to whether I was the real Corwin or merely one of his shadows.From Rebma I had traveledinto Amber, utilizing the power of the Pattern to effect an instantaneous journey home.After fighting aninconclusive duel with Eric, I had fled via the Trumps into the keeping of my beloved brother andwould-be assassin, Bleys.I joined with Bleys in an attack on Amber, a mismanaged affair which we had lost.Bleys vanished duringthe final engagement, under circumstances which looked likely to prove fatal but, the more that I learnedand thought about it, probably had not.This left me to become Eric's prisoner and an unwilling party tohis coronation, after which he had had me blinded and locked away.A few years in the dungeons ofAmber had seen a regeneration of my eyes, in direct proportion to the deterioration of my state of mind.It was only the accidental appearance of Dad's old adviser Dworkin, worse off mentally than myself,which had led to a way of escape.After that, I set about recovering and I resolved to be more prudent the next time I went after Eric.Ijourneyed through Shadow toward an old land where I had once reigned-Avalon-with plans to obtainthere a substance of which I alone among Amberites was aware, a chemical unique in its ability toundergo detonation in Amber.En route, I had passed through the land of Lorraine, there encountering myold exiled Avalonian general Ganelon, or someone very much like him.I remained because of a woundedknight, a girl, and a local menace peculiarly similar to a thing occurring in the vicinity of Amber herself-agrowing black circle somehow related to the black road our enemies traveled, a thing for which I heldmyself partly responsible because of a curse I had pronounced at the time of my blinding.I won thebattle, lost the girl, and traveled on to Avalon with Ganelon [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]